


Fiendfyre

by Algorithm_of_Dreams



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Battle of Hogwarts, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:00:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27852134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Algorithm_of_Dreams/pseuds/Algorithm_of_Dreams
Summary: Harry and Draco get stuck in the room of requirement after Crabbe sets it on fire.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Kudos: 63





	Fiendfyre

**Author's Note:**

> This is an old one but I thought I might as well post it. Unbetad all mistakes on me :/. Hope you enjoy :)

The room of requirement was on fire. Damnit. Crabbe was an idiot.

Wherever we ran, the fire cut us off, leaping around corners like an animal, it’s many faces taunting us with our certain deaths.

It was Hermione who found them, tripping over a handle in her haste. Broomsticks.

Thank Merlin!

She always claimed to hate flying and we all knew she wasn’t exactly incredible at it but with the fire behind her, she was a phoenix. Perhaps if we lit the quidditch pitch ablaze we’d actually get some quality playing out of the crap-shots that make up the Slytherin team. Or not…

Well either way, none of that was on my mind then.

The flames leapt higher and I couldn’t even see the door, only Hermione’s broom tip. Just keep following. I hoped to merlin she remembered the way.

Then I saw them—Malfoy and Zabini clinging to the top of what would soon be a raging bonfire heap of junk. Crabbe was gone.

“We have to save them!” I yelled to Hermione and Ron, wheeling around to return to the Slytherins.

“Are you mental?” Ron shrieked. I probably was. 

He followed me anyway though as we pelted back through the flames. I missed Malfoy’s hand by a fraction on my first pass and had to turn and take another. I hadn’t dared to slow down but perhaps that was my folly.

Ron and Zabini were already meters ahead, pelting towards the door after Hermione as I passed Malfoy again, this time catching his hand and dragging him up behind me.

By the time I’d regained speed and balance on the broom, Ron was out of my sight and Hermione was long gone. I sped in what I hoped was the direction the others had gone.

Soon enough it was clear that we were lost. I knew Malfoy could feel it too, the way his hands were tightening and twisting in the back of my shirt a clear sign. The smoke was thickening and the air shimmered with the heat.

We wouldn’t—couldn’t—get out now.

I could barely control the broom; my hands were shaking too badly and my inability to breathe going beyond what could reasonably be blamed on the fumes. This was it. I would burn and the horcrux would be lost into the ashes and preserved. Voldemort would win and the wizarding world would be powerless to stop him.

My vision began to swim and I realised just how long it had been since I took a breath. The broom was spiralling and all I saw before my eyes fell closed was the looming face of a dragon in the flames.

What followed was a blurred mess but a few details stood stark against the chaos: Malfoy reaching around me to take control of the broom, his warm arms cradling me and holding me in place; feeling the tiara slip from my fingers a fraction too late; watching the doors slam closed behind Ron, Hermione and Zabini.

We were on a rafter. It was hardly a sustainable game plan but it was all we had left. The flames licked higher and higher up the pillar.

Despite the heat, I was shaking and quite unable to stop. My breaths were coming in uneven gasps. I had never really considered whether or not I was scared to die, the strong-standing fact that I had to survive having well and truly dismissed it as an option. Though I suppose everyone is a little scared to die when it comes time. Malfoy certainly was.

He was crying, the tears reflecting the dancing flames as they trailed down his cheeks. His gaze was fixed at the leaping, devouring maw of the fire below us. He’d lost Crabbe to those flames. He’d watched the flesh of his friend eaten out by fire.

“I’m sorry.” I put my hand on his shoulder. He didn’t react, not even to shrug me off. I couldn’t think of anything comforting to say. I hoped my silence meant something to him. I wasn’t sure if it did me.

“Crabbe made his bed.” His voice was hard but I knew he didn’t feel it. Anyone could see his pain. It dripped off of him, fuelling the raging tendrils below us.

I found myself needing to say something. To fill the space between us. The space between me and the death that awaited. “I failed. I was supposed to destroy it. After Nagini, it was the last one. They’re all going to die because I—because I failed.”

Malfoy was looking at me now, confusion on his smudged face. “Destroy what?”

“The bloody horcrux! Fucking tiara!” My breaths were taken by sobs now and new tears burn trails down my cheeks.

“This?” Malfoy was holding the horrible thing, hooked around his long finger. “You were holding it to your chest, I—it was important. I caught it when it fell.”

“Well it doesn’t fucking matter now does it?”

He looked taken aback. “What?”

“I can’t destroy it without the basilisk fang Ron has."

“They can be destroyed by Fiendfyre, you know that?”

“What?”

“That raging inferno trying to kill us? Fiendfyre. It’s one of the few known ways to destroy a Horcrux.”

“How…?”

“How do I know? Horcruxes are dark magic. I’m a pureblood. I thought it would be obvious.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, Potter. I have no idea Crabbe could create something so powerful but he has. It’s clear he has.” He held the tiara out over the drop below us. “Shall I?”

“What if—you could be lying.”

“Does it matter? This is the only chance you have. Either I destroy it now and everyone who’s fighting gets an actual chance or it gets destroyed later when the fire finally sniffs us out. By then the battle might be lost.”

“I—“ I couldn’t help the sinking hope that Ron and Hermione would save us before it got to that but I knew he was right. “Fine.”

I watched it fall, almost as if it were in slow motion. It looked beautiful at a distance where I couldn’t feel it’s pulsating, ticking heart. It barely fell five meters before the Fiendfyre snapped it up in flaming jaws. It was the closest the fire had gotten to our perch and only the need to see it destroyed kept me from cringing away from the edge.

It exploded in black oozing smoke with the high scream of the soul dying. The flames rippled and convulsed around it, spewing three heads. All of them Voldemort. They charged at us, the scream growing louder.

This was it. We were to be eaten by fire.

“Protego!” The flames rebounded off the barrier as it formed around us. Malfoy was shaking with the power of the fire as he struggled to maintain the shield.

I raised the wand I’d won from him and cast my own protection charm.

We wouldn’t go down without a fight.

***

Eventually the fire turned its raving search away and we were left alone in our fortified bubble of protection and shielding charms.

I fell backwards against Malfoy, exhausted. I was still trembling even through the heat and smoke was an insistent burning in my chest. I knew I should be trying to find a way out—There was a battle out there!—but I couldn’t think. It was all fuzz and panic between my ears. The heat certainly didn’t help. That was why it took my so long to realise what I had done. I was leaning on my nemesis.

Malfoy was suspiciously still against my back.

I couldn’t stop myself from tensing and had hope he didn’t feel it.

He began to move. My heart jumped into my throat. I tried to pull reasonable apologies out of the cotton wool filling my skull but I couldn’t comprehend a single thought through the drumming in my chest.

Then he wrapped an arm around my chest. “Breathe Potter.” I felt his chin drop onto the top of my head. “We’ll wait for the fire to die down then we can get out. We’re going to be fine.”

“They’re fighting out there!” The rage tapered into a blade sharp enough to cut through the static in my mind. Fine? Fine?

“Potter—Harry—trying to get out now is suicide. They’ll have a better chance if you wait.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“What?”

I jerked out of his grip to face him. “Your friends—your family— aren’t out there dying! I’m the only one who can save them!” I could feel my fists balling up, my right hand tightening around Malfoy’s old wand. Red sparks showered over the edge of the rafter, bouncing off the bottom of the shield below us.

His brows drew together. “Yes they are.”

The guilt thumped into my gut.

He had every right to be angry, hurt, but he continued calmly. I didn’t miss the way his voice trembled at the end. “Maybe not for your side but my mother is still out there.”

“I can’t lose anyone else…” I don’t know why I said it. I didn’t have the right to explaining myself. Those five words, fading off weakly, did a piss poor job of it anyway.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Why was he apologising? He wasn’t even close to being in the wrong here. But being the coward I always accused him of, I couldn’t even begin to put that into words for him.

I hugged him instead. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, sorry, sorry…”

I was so highly strung. There was no way I could do better than that but I hoped he would understand that I was sorry—truly sorry—for everything. For everything since we were eleven and I met him in Madam Murkins.

“I’m sorry too.”

In that moment, with the fire leaping below us and a battle raging beyond the walls, I would never have expected to find peace but in Draco’s arms, nothing in the world could get me. I was safe.

***

Living a mortal life after death is gives you a uniquely adapted view of the world. Its like when someone in your family dies and you return from the funeral with the strong urge to get your life together and do something good because you’ve come face to face with your mortality another time, but with the added knowledge of exactly how it’s going to be when you finally go. You come back knowing exactly how everyone felt when they realised they didn’t have one more minute to spend with you and that they never said what they had truly wanted. You come back knowing how much it hurt you to see their pain.

My death gave me the what I needed to run after him.

“Malfoy!” He and his mother were only a quarter-way across the bridge, far within hearing range, but neither turned. My feet stuttered for a moment until I could push them to follow. 

“Draco!”

I saw his steps falter and I began to run. “Draco wait!”

Only when he stopped and turned did my courage fail. I stumbled to halt, meters from him.

“Harry—“

I rushed forward and kissed him. “Please don’t go.”

“Okay.”

His smile lit up the world.


End file.
